I've started reading The Age of Sustainable Development by Columbia economics professor and special advisor to the UN, Jeffrey Sachs. Below is a short excerpt and graph from the first chapter of the book illustrating worldwide economic growth in per capita 1990 international dollars.
Essentially, the world experienced close to zero growth for the first 1750 years of recorded economic history and only began to really take off around 1750 in Britain with the Industrial Revolution. This is seen by the sharp rise in the curve of the graph below.
It's pretty remarkable that only 250 years ago, we would most likely be living at near subsistence levels with little wealth or financial security. Of course, this is still true for roughly one billion people on our planet, as this growth has mostly found its way to the developed countries of the west and Japan.
Another book, The Haves and the Have Nots, which I finished over the weekend calculated that 80% of your financial income and wealth can be estimated by the location and parents you are born from. That leaves roughly 20% of your lifetime income as a result of luck, work, and other factors. This helps to explain why so many migrant workers simply wish to change their location and emigrate to other countries where the location premium alone can add substantial amounts to their lifetime incomes and financial security.
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